Strange Brew

The above image is scanned from an original Lobby Card in the Northernstars Collection

Believe it or not, Strange Brew`s story structure is very loosely based on Hamlet. In place of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, we get Bob and Doug McKenzie. Elsinore Castle has become Elsinore Brewery, where the new president, Claude Elsinore, played by Paul Dooley has recently helped murder his brother and married his former sister-in-law, outraging the dead fellow`s sole heir. But after that, there`s not much Shakespeare left to go around. The younger Elsinore is a woman, Pam, played by Lynne Griffin and the main villain isn’t Claude, but his brewmeister who in reality is a nefarious scientist spiking Elsinore beer with a brain-control drug. Somehow they talked Max von Sydow into playing this part. As the story unfolds, one day Bob and Doug, show up at the brewery trying to get a free 12-pack via the old “mouse-in-a-bottle” scam. But instead of free beer they end up with jobs checking the bottling line. Once inside they get mixed up in the brewmeister`s evil plot and the predictable Bedlam ensues. Bob and Doug play death-match hockey, get framed for kidnapping, they are getting committed to an insane asylum, end up drinking gallons of beer, and exchanging countless insults, including the slightly over-used “hoser.”

Strange Brew is very funny but dated yet still worth the effort for any true SCTV fan.